


Job Training

by Turbulent_Muse



Series: Magnusquerade stories [15]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Do Not Archive, Elias hating Tim, Elias teaching Tim, Gen, Learning how to be a monster responsibly, More like Elias BASTARD am I right?, Tim hating Elias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turbulent_Muse/pseuds/Turbulent_Muse
Summary: A Magnusquerade fic. Elias shows Tim the ropes before Tim leaves. Neither of them have a good time.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Tim Stoker
Series: Magnusquerade stories [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600123
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61
Collections: The_Magnusquerade





	Job Training

Tim stood uncomfortably in Elias’ office as the other man stared at him with a smug smile.

“So,” Elias said. “You need my help. _You_.”

“God, you’re such an asshole. Never mind, I’m leaving now.”

“Now Tim, you don’t want to do that. My interference is the only reason you haven’t killed anyone. Yet.”

Tim froze with his hand on the doorknob. Tim didn’t remember much about waking up as a vampire other than hunger, but according to what Basira had told him Elias had been the one to find him people to feed from and make sure he didn’t drain them dry or tear them apart in the process. Tim knew Elias must have had his own reasons for helping him, but still felt that he owed the man a debt. Not that he’d blame himself if he _had_ killed anyone. No, that blood would have been on Jon’s hands. But now that he had control of his actions again he wouldn’t be able to blame anyone but himself if someone died by his hand.

“Wouldn’t you like just a _little_ advice before you run off and try to figure out how to be a vampire on your own?”

Tim sighed and turned back around. “One night. I’m giving you _one night_ and then I’m leaving.”

Elias smiled. “Excellent. Now, go get your coat, we’re going _hunting_.”

……

“I don’t want to do this.” Tim grumbled as he and Elias searched the dark streets.

“I’ve _told_ you. If you don’t know how to feed from someone and then alter their memory you’re going to make trouble for _everyone_.”

“I know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Elias rolled his eyes. Then he saw a lone figure approaching in the darkness. “Tim. I do believe we’ve found you a dinner guest.”

“Stop calling it that. Please.”

“Do let me have just a little fun, Tim. It wouldn’t kill you to lighten up.”

Tim just scowled in response.

The two vampires then pulled the person into a dark alley, Tim’s hand was immediately over their mouth to stifle their screams. He and Elias had practiced this.

“Now, calm them down. Feel their mind with your own and assert your will over it.” Elias instructed. “It’ll help at first if you say your commands out loud.”

Tim concentrated for a moment. “You’re okay, you’re calm, you’re not scared, you don’t want to scream.”

The person stopped struggling in Tim’s grasp and he slowly removed his hand from their mouth. They remained silent, staring up at Tim with wide, complacent eyes. Tim wanted to vomit.

“Now, keep your focus on those commands or they’ll be able to slip out of your control. Whenever you’re ready, but soon, _carefully_ bite into their neck. Try to keep the puncture neat.”

Tim hesitated. “Can’t I go for the wrist instead? That seems less dangerous and less… intimate.”

“There’s a lot of little bones in the wrist, do you want to risk accidentally breaking them? It takes skill and practice not to and you did say you wanted to keep your prey alive _and_ unharmed.”

“Alright, shit.” He looked the person in his grasp in their eyes. “I’m sorry.” He said.

Elias rolled his eyes again. “Our end goal here is to make them forget, so it doesn’t matter if you apologize.”

Tim shot him a glare.

“Tick tock, Tim.”

Tim turned back around and reluctantly bent down to reach the person’s neck. At that point instinct took over and he bit down and drank greedily. When Elias pulled him away Tim growled at him like a wild animal.

“Pace yourself, you don’t want to kill them.”

Tim looked appropriately shamed. Elias snapped his fingers in front of his face.

“Focus, Tim. You still have the most important part to get through.”

Tim pulled himself together. He closed his eyes and tried to see the mind of the person in his arms, tried to picture their memories of the last few minutes. Then he pictured plucking those memories out of their mind. “You won’t remember this.” He said. Then he let the person go, turned them to the direction they had been walking before, and sent them on their way.

“Very good, Tim!” Elias praised, and Tim felt disgust deep in his gut.

He was so upset with himself that he couldn’t hold it back and he bent over and started heaving. Nothing came up though and he was left with just sore muscles and a guilty conscience.

Elias sighed in disappointment. “Now, come on, I want to make sure you’ll do just as well with the next one.”

“ _Next one_?”

“Of course. These things take practice Tim, and I’m not letting you leave until I make sure you have a hundred percent success rate.”

Tim groaned. “One day I’m going to come back here and kill you.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Tim.”

……

By the time they made their way back to the Institute, Tim had a pretty good grasp on his powers and he… didn’t really know how to feel about that. Part of him wanted to go back outside and wait for sunrise, but another part of him was _excited_ at the possibility of leaving everything behind and starting a new life.

“You certainly are a quick learner, Tim. I figured I would have to convince you to stay longer, but I feel confident enough in your abilities that I won’t protest if you leave at sundown.”

“Oh, there is no ‘if’. The sooner I never see your face again the better.”

“I won’t argue. Honestly you’ve become something of a nuisance.”

“Well fuck you too, Elias. If you want me gone so bad why did you bother to help me?”

“I just didn’t want you to get sloppy. Being sloppy leads to getting found out and that wouldn’t be good for _anyone_. Not at this stage, at least.”

“What are you planning? Wait, I just remembered, I don’t care.”

Elias’ smile was full of venom. “Why don’t you spend the day down in the archives? Say goodbye to the others, get a last day’s work done, sleep.”

“… No. If I’m stuck here for the day I want you to teach me more. I’m going to get everything that I can out of these hellish circumstances.”

“Very well. What would you like to know?”

“Teach me how to resist someone trying to mess with my mind.”

Elias leaned forward. “You are aware that to do that _I’ll_ have to try to mess with your mind?”

“Yes.” Tim said through gritted teeth. “But if you aren’t shit at teaching me then you won’t be able to do that successfully.”

Elias scowled. “We’ll see. The first step is to learn to _feel_ your mind. Close your eyes.”

Tim did so.

“Good, now, focus on your unmanipulated self. Feel how it feels to be free of outside influence.”

After about a minute, Tim’s face turned to a mask of frustration.

Elias sighed. “Are you having trouble?”

“It’s not like it’s easy to think about yourself on such a meta level!”

“Yes, I never really pictured you as one for introspection. It might help if you picture your mind as a place. Think of somewhere that represents you in some way.”

“Alright.”

“Once you have that image project it outside yourself so it surrounds you.”

Tim thought hard, trying to picture himself on the bank of the river where he used to go kayaking, back when his life had any space for fun. The roar of the river drowned out everything else so it was just him, alone. Then he pushed that thought out of his head and into the space around him. “Okay, what now?” He got no response. “Elias?” He asked and opened his eyes.

Elias was staring blankly ahead. “Tim, what are you picturing?”

“Do you really need to know that?”

“Is it a river?” Elias asked urgently.

“Are you in my head right now?!” Tim asked, standing up from his chair.

“No, no I’m not.” Elias’ voice trembled. Tim had never heard Elias sound scared before.

“Then how…”

“I see it. I can see the river. I can smell the wet dirt and feel the spray of the water on my face and… sunlight. I can feel the sunlight on my skin… Tim, how are you doing this?”

“What, mister omniscient doesn’t know something?” Tim teased.

“This is _serious_ , Tim.” Elias growled. Then he gritted his teeth and, with effort, focussed his eyes. “I have _never_ heard of a vampire being able to do this before.”

“Isn’t it the same as putting fake memories in people’s heads?”

“This wasn’t a memory, it felt like it was happening right now. You made me see something that wasn’t there.”

“So I have, like, cool illusion powers?”

“It must be the Stranger blood that was in your system when you died.”

“If you’re about to tell me I’m part of the Stranger clan then I’m walking out into the daylight right now.”

“No, the Stranger can’t do this. But neither can Beholding.”

For the first time in a long time, Tim smiled. “So I’m not bound to the Eye anymore?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I think you’re… somewhere in between.”

“But you don’t know. It’s possible that I don’t belong to _any_ of the powers.”

“It’s… possible.”

“I’m… free.” Tim said.

“Now, Tim, don’t be—”

“No! No, you don’t get to take this away from me, I’m _free_.”

“Even if, _if_ , you aren’t bound to a clan directly you should be bound to your sire.”

“Nope. I don’t feel any connection to Jon anymore. Maybe it’s because of his coma. Or maybe it’s because I’m finally _free_ of all this _bullshit_.”

“Not _all_ of it. Don’t forget, you are still a vampire.”

Tim deflates a bit and sits back down.

“Was your freedom really worth such a heavy cost?” Elias said, his smug grin back on his face now that he had the upper hand again.

“I… I don’t know. But I’m going to find out, somewhere far, far away from here. And Jon. And you.”

“Well, you’re still trapped in the Institute for the next eight hours. Shall we continue your training?”

“Nope! I’m going to go… somewhere you aren’t. Don’t want to risk you bringing me down from the first good news I’ve had in way too long.”

“Very well.” Elias says, already busying himself with some paperwork.

Tim walked out of the office and went to the library. They had comfortable chairs there and he wanted to surround himself with the closest thing he could get to normal people.

He walked in and found himself a seat to settle into. As he sat he idly watched the researchers going about their jobs. He thought back to when he was just a researcher, before he had known about any of the shit going on here. Back when he’d had things worth living for besides getting vengeance for Danny. For the first time it really sunk in that he _had_ gotten vengeance for Danny. So what was he living for now?

He added that to the list of things he needed to figure out and tried to focus on the here and now. On the people around him. He realized he could hear their heartbeats. He tried to separate and count them in his head. Ten, there were ten humans in the library. As he concentrated he realized he could smell them too, their sweat, their deodorant, the detergent in their clothes. He tried to shake himself out of it but as he looked around at the few people within his line of sight the things he noticed made his stomach clench and turn.

He saw weak points and how fast they could run and ways to block counterattacks, he saw all the exits in the room and how to block them off, he saw hot blood pumping just beneath their skin, he saw food. He saw _prey_.

He jumped up out of his chair and rushed out of the library. He got some weird looks but ignored them. He had to find a place where there weren’t any people. Eventually he ended up in Artefact Storage, certain that he was more dangerous than anything else in the room. He wasn’t even hungry. That was the really sick thing. He had simply been seeing the world as a predator does when surrounded by prey and opportunity.

Tim trembled as the adrenaline of his escape from the library faded, and eventually, huddled in a corner and curled in on himself, Tim slept.

……

Elias heard Tim approaching from a long ways away and so did not react when Tim slammed open his door.

“Tell me how to stop it!” Tim shouted.

“I thought you were avoiding me.” Elias set down his papers and turned to look at Tim.

“Tell me how to…” Tim stopped, turned around, and closed the door. “Tell me how to stop seeing people as prey.” He demanded.

“I don’t suppose you’ll take ‘embrace it’ for an answer.”

Tim just glared.

“Very well. It will simply take time, Tim. Time and practice, so don’t think isolating yourself will help.”

Tim sat down in the chair. “So what do I do in the meantime?”

“Accept that you have these thoughts, then ignore them. And for god’s sake, stay well fed. If you think you’re having trouble seeing humans as people _now_ , you don't want to know how hard it is when you’re hungry.”

“I’m… really going to have to do this. Feed on people to survive.”

“ _If_ you want to survive.” Elias said with no sympathy. A part of Tim almost wished Jon was awake just so he’d have _anyone_ else to talk about this with. “Well, do you think you can live this way?”

“I… I don’t know… But I’m going to _try_ , dammit.”

“Why?” Elias sounded genuinely curious.

“Mostly just to spite you. And the Eye. And everyone else who thought they could control me.”

“How childish. I must say, I’m disappointed. But, knowing you I suppose I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up that just maybe you might for once be interesting.”

Tim looked Elias right in the eye. “You know what your problem is? You don’t see _anyone_ as a person, just a tool that you can use. And you can’t blame _that_ on being a terrible ancient vampire. No, you made a _choice_ to give up on the world and only care about yourself. Your life must be so _meaningless_. I mean of course you can amuse yourself by fucking with everyone you trap here, but that’s just because if you didn’t you’d be alone. You can never have a meaningful connection with anyone and you _chose_ that. You’re a fucking idiot.”

The pen Elias was holding snapped, staining his hand and desk with ink, but he didn’t seem to notice, he was trembling with rage. “I could kill you faster than you can blink.”

“Please, if that was true you would have done it already. But you know if you kill me the others will find some way to escape you and that’d ruin all your nefarious little plans. Plus it might be enough to turn Jon against you completely if he ever wakes up.”

“You're lucky the sun is down because I want you out of my Institute _right now_.”

“Gladly.” Tim turned and left. He walked home and packed his things as fast as he could. He wanted so much to leave right that minute, but he knew he couldn’t. He had something to say to Jon first.

**Author's Note:**

> To see Tim's conversation with Jon go read Unsuccessful Retirement Plan by me.


End file.
